Belgian nature as you’ve never seen it before. That’s the baseline of themovie Our nature , __ which hits theaters this week. But how do you keepthat promise?
Pieter DumonSeptember 20, 202203:00
The idea
Actually we have Our nature thanks to our northern neighbors. Six years agoat Hotel Hungaria, the production house behind the film, they are busy with_Greenland_ , a garden program with and around Bartel Van Riet. Because theprogram can go a little wider than just our own backyard, Van Riet will talkto the makers of one of the items. The new wilderness. That naturedocumentary, shot in the Oostvaardersplassen, enticed the Dutch to the cinemaen masse. The project impresses the Belgians of Hotel Hungaria. There and thenthe dreaming begins. Because why should something that is possible in theNetherlands not work in Belgium?
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The money
Unfortunately, there are usually practical obstacles between dream and deed.That was also at Our nature the case. Starting with the huge budget you needfor such a project. A nature documentary like Our nature turning is a long-term job. The plan was to film almost continuously for two years. A matter ofoptimally portraying all seasons. In addition, two teams would be sent intothe field. One with Pim Niesten behind the camera, the other with hiscolleague Dick Harrewijn as director of photography. Add to that thespecialized teams for drone shots and underwater images and you get a total ofabout 960 shooting days. A huge number.
“We also didn’t want to make any concessions in terms of image quality,” saysproducer Line Leeters. “Everything was filmed with the best material.” Aninvestment that is now paying off. Because the cinema film that is now in thecinemas was initially not on the schedule. Our nature would be a seven-partdocuseries, for television. “But when we saw the footage and noticed howrazor-sharp it was, we thought it was a bit of a shame not to show it on a bigscreen. That is why there is now the film. The documentary series can be seenon Canvas and RTL next spring.”
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The final invoice will ultimately amount to around 4.5 million euros. Too muchfor a production house like Hotel Hungaria to carry alone. And so they aregoing to present their ambitious plans to the Flemish Audiovisual Fund (VAF)in the hope of support. The first file comes up against a njet. Only when apilot is run showing how a tree falcon hunts for dragonflies does the VAF givein. The VRT is now also part of the story.
“But even with those two partners, the budgetary picture was far fromcomplete,” says Leeters. “In the end we decided to start running anyway,despite the gap in our financial plan. We were convinced that other partnerswould step in once we had some more footage. Whatever happened.”
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The patience
On March 4, 2019, Pim Niesten, the man who made the majority of the images,will go into the field for the first time. In the weeks and months beforethat, an extensive script was made in which it is written which animals he hasto record during which activities. “That scenario was huge,” Leeters recalls.“The planning took over the entire wall of our office.” But the strictplanning is completely obsolete after a few shooting days. Nature is not soeasily pushed into a script. Now take the moor frog. A rare animal whose malespecimens turn bright blue for a few days during mating season. A spectaclethat had been planned from the very first shooting days. “But in the end Iwaited almost three years for those animals,” says Niesten. “The first twosprings it was too dry and too hot. A fatal combination for those frogs. Therewas hardly any mating season. I really wanted large groups of those blue frogsto be photographed, but there was not much more than reports of the occasionalstray specimen.”
Fortunately, we experienced a more or less normal spring last year. And so thefrogs were suddenly there. But even then it was still exciting. “When I gotthe phone that mating was about to start, I immediately dropped everything Iwas doing,” says Niesten. “After all, those frogs only turn blue for a veryshort period of time. So I had to shoot all the images I needed in theshortest possible time. In the end, with some luck, I managed to capture theentire scene from the film in one shooting day. Fortunately, because when Iinstalled myself at the same pool the next day, there was hardly a frog to beseen.
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The moor frogs aren’t the only animals to test Niesten’s patience. Even morevulgar species such as deer or hares turned out to be more difficult to snarethan you might think at first glance. Although that also has to do with theperfectionism of Niesten and co. to make. “I didn’t just want to film hares.They had to be boxing copies. During the mating season, both males and femalesclash with each other to determine the mutual ranking. A fantastic spectaclethat I absolutely wanted to capture.” But for that you need some luck. Notonly do the hares want to box, they also have to do it in a beautiful settingwhere the light is just right.
The red deer also deserve a special mention. They may be quite numerous in theArdennes forests, but if you want to record a fight between two bellowingmales like Niesten, the search suddenly becomes a lot more difficult. “Inaddition, I always want very close images of such a scene. But deer are veryshy. The slightest noise is enough to make them disappear into the woods.”
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The technique
With the images of those deer, hares or moor frogs, you as a spectator canmore or less imagine how they were made. That changes when you suddenly see aspring fire spider crawling across the screen. The film shows how the red-colored male, at the risk of his own life, sneaks into the female’sunderground burrow to mate with her. “By far the most difficult sequence inthe entire film,” says Niesten. “We’re talking about animals that are barely acentimeter in size that also do their thing in a pitch-dark undergroundburrow. In the field itself, that is almost impossible to visualize.”
Together with spider expert Koen Van Keer, Niesten devised a different plan ofapproach. “Koen had previously moved a colony of those spiders from anindustrial area to a safer area. They had done that at the time with the helpof tubes with which they could move the spiders, hollow and all. We appliedthe same technique and placed the spider, hollow and all, in a kind ofaquarium so that we could see what was happening underground.”
The result exceeded the wildest expectations. “The images are really unique.Mating of the spring fire spider has never been observed, let alone capturedon video. This was also completely new information for a specialist like Koen.The scene in question has meanwhile been sent as study material to a wholeseries of scientists at home and abroad.”
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The network
The stories Niesten tells show time and again how crucial time is. The moorfrogs only turn blue for a handful of days, the spring fire spider can befound above ground in that one week, young foxes only come above the groundonce for the first time and for the scene where lizards hatch, you better notto be late.
“The fact that we were able to film all these things despite the limited timeis largely due to our network,” says Niesten. “All over Belgium there wereforest rangers, scientists, people from Natuurpunt or just enthusiastic naturelovers who kept us informed about what they heard or saw. Without them, thisproject would never have become what it is today. When I go out into thefield, I’m mostly preoccupied with that one species that I hope to film. Thenyou get into a kind of tunnel vision and you are no longer concerned with whatis still happening. Fortunately, our network was there to keep me informed.”
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The Great Absence
If there is one animal that has made a lot of fuss over the past few years, itis the wolf. But of our country’s largest predator is in Our nature no traceto be found. “We wanted to tell a story around every animal in the film or inthe series,” explains Niesten. “Which means you have to be able to film itduring a certain action. This is difficult with an extremely shy animal likethe wolf. With a bit of luck we might have captured a passing copy on camera,but what story do you tell with that?”
Moreover, during the shooting period there was a lot to do about that wolf.“Wolvin Naja had just disappeared under suspicious circumstances, which madethe people of Nature and Forest very protective when it came to the wolves.Their location was shared with as few people as possible. The habitat of theseanimals is also largely on military domain. We didn’t just get permission tofilm there.”
Although Niesten continues to find the story about the wolf’s comeback veryfascinating. “Of course I would like to work on that. But because wolves areso shy, that’s a hugely complex project. The budget you need to tell thatstory well will roughly correspond to the total budget we now have for Ournature had. But if someone is willing to do that, I am happy to make time for
(Image: A24)